When Captain America went dark: Knives Out director reveals Chris Evans came up with ‘eat s**t’ line

For the uninitiated, the family had been gathered into the living room to discuss the demise of patriarch, grandfather and crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (played by the late Christopher Plummer). The main cast of characters played by a bevy of stars (including the likes of Toni Colette, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Chris Evans) are blaming each other for the tragic happening, but when Evans’ Ransom enters the room (and the film) after a considerable period, people turn on him. Ransom cuts them short and sassily responds with a simple but effective ‘eat s**t.’ The ‘statement’ is met with a hilarious reaction, with different members asking Ransom to mind his mouth. But Michael Shannon’s improvised line towards the end of the scene takes the cake — “I am not eating an iota of s**t.”

The sequence, apart from being funny, of course, is pivotal to the plot of the film, as this is the first time when we see nearly all of the main cast together in a room, including Daniel Craig’s private detective Benoit Blanc. Not to mention that Evans’ Ransom is introduced as one of the key players in the story during the long-ish scene.

Breaking it down for Vanity Fair, filmmaker Johnson had revealed earlier that the ‘eat s**t’ line came from the actor himself: “When I wrote it, it was ‘F**k you.’ He goes, ‘F**k you, f**k you, f**k you, f**k YOU…’ I decided right before we started shooting, I was like, ‘You know what? I really want this movie to be PG-13.’ Because I was thinking about growing up as a kid and watching those Peter Ustinov Poirot movies with my family and thinking that was the age when I got into this stuff. I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s make this change.’ I ended up pulling out a lot of f-bombs. There were a lot more f-bombs in this script! And then we were riffing, and Chris (Evans) was like eat s**t always works.”

Chris Evans played Ransom in Knives Out.

And those of us who have watched (and liked) Knives Out can attest to the fact that ‘eat s**t’ was the perfect replacement for the previously used expletive.

You can stream Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery on Netflix.